Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Rural and Islands Housing Fund is a demand-led fund. The following table shows how much the Scottish Government has spent on the Rural and Islands Housing Fund in each year since 2023-24, broken down by local authority area:

The Scottish Government has spent approximately £80m on A96 Dualling. This figure comprises expenditure on the vast range of technical and specialist advisory services required to appropriately inform the design, development, assessment, preparation and promotion of major trunk road improvements to the A96.

£261.3m has been spent on consultancy fees on the A9 Dualling Programme out of an estimated total scheme cost for the Programme of £3.97 billion, at April 2025 prices. This figure is inclusive of VAT where applicable and includes spend for taking the various component projects through design and statutory process stages, acquisition of land, demolition and preparatory works, procurement of contractors to construct the works, as well as costs of administering construction works contracts and monitoring construction works activities undertaken to date.

Whilst menu content will be decided locally, there is much work underway by Scottish Government to facilitate the uptake of venison across the public sector.

This includes a successful pilot with Wild Jura, Argyll and Bute Council and Food for Life Scotland to supply venison into six primary schools. Officials are working collaboratively to explore opportunities to increase demand for venison and develop options to increase supply by helping the sector make the most of various routes to markets such as wholesale and framework agreements used widely across public sector.

In February 2026, the Scottish Government provided £45,000 to SAOS and Scottish Venison to undertake activity to help build capability within the venison sector and drive increased consumption of venison from Scotland. This includes work to improve and establish new supply chains, build skills and develop resources for use within schools.

Officials will continue to work collaboratively with the Scottish Venison Association, Scotland Food & Drink as well as other key stakeholders to ensure opportunities are available within the public sector to enjoy venison.

The Scottish Government promotes Scottish landed fish and shellfish through grants to Seafood Scotland from the Marine Fund Scotland.

Marine Fund Scotland awards for promotion of Scottish Seafood by year since 2021 are:

2021 £2.6m

2022 £1.92m

2023 £1.75m

2024 £1.85m

2025 £1.7m

As these funds are awarded to promote Scottish landed fish, it is not possible to split them out by fish and shellfish.

This is an operational matter for ScotRail. The Member may wish to contact them directly for the information.

In addition, the Office for Rail and Road (ORR) publishes statistical information on station usage on its website, which can be accessed here: Estimates of station usage | ORR Data Portal

The Scottish Government does not hold data on how many GP appointments were conducted (a) in-person, (b) by telephone and (c) virtually in the Highlands and Islands region in each year since 2021.

PHS publishes information relevant to this question using GP encounters data as part of the General Practice in-hours activity visualisation publication. Encounters are not the same as appointments as not all encounters will be recorded on an appointment booking system. Further information on the limitations of this data can be found on the publication website.

Currently, no members of the CMAL Board live in island communities.

Scottish Ministers have been clear in their desire to strengthen islander representation on the Boards of ferry bodies. Following the election officials will engage with Ministers regarding a new public appointments campaign for CMAL Non-Executive Board members.

NHS Boards submitted formal proposals for walk-in services in their Board area in response to a formal commission from DG Health and Social Care on behalf of Scottish Ministers. Proposals – and pilot walk-in centres – are at different stages of readiness and on that basis have varying levels of clarity and certainty on the Whole Time Equivalent number of staff, and staffing required.

Work is ongoing to identify the number of staff employed at all bands across the 13 phase one sites when they are up and running. As proposals for phase two sites have not yet been finalised, total numbers of staff are not available for all of the walk-in services.

No specific analysis has been conducted by the Scottish Government on the number of Scottish-domiciled students who have enrolled in undergraduate courses in (a) other UK nations or (b) overseas because their course of choice was not available in Scottish universities.

Universities are autonomous institutions with responsibility for their own course provision

Data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) shows that there are fewer Scottish domiciled students leaving Scotland to enter undergraduate study in the rest of the UK in 2024-25, than there were in 2021-22.

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb273/figure-9

The Techscaler programme does not directly invest in businesses as it is our national platform for creating, developing and scaling tech startups. The Highlands and Islands has 91 members in the region, who can access the national network of tailored education, mentorship, investment access, community infrastructure, and international opportunities available through the programme. A fuller breakdown of regional participation has recently been published in the Techscaler Annual Report 2025.